The last time I did my HIIT session was the 11th of March, which is over 2 weeks ago. To be frank, the reason I hadn’t done it was because of sheer laziness and also, one of those weeks I was traveling to do my OBGYN NBME (which I honored and will have to write a review/advice post about, sometime before the week ends) and a study day about how to take NBME shelf examinations (kind of redundant with the word examinations, but whatever). Also, another reason, aside from too busy within one week and laziness; one of the exercises actually caused pain on my ulnar side of my arm, which traveled all the way up to my elbow, as would be expected if it was affecting the ulnar nerve itself. The exercise I am talking about is the second one in the HIIT session and is called Side Plank Rotation. So because that workout caused me pain, I decided to switch it up for mountain climbers, which I think is a very intense and hard core workout. Two of the exercises were replaced with mountain climbers, the aforementioned one and the last one.

So, as a way to keep a record of how much I am doing within that 45 seconds interval, I have written them down and plan that every time I do a session, I try to at least do one more “rep” in that particular workout. Also, I have realized form is everything, even with these HIIT sessions, so I am all for form and speed but for the time being; proper form will win and once that’s down packed, I will add in speed to increase the amount of reps per exercise. I also opted out of jumping squats because of my knees and went for regular old fashion squats, which she refers to in the video as air squats. I also did regular push ups and not half push ups. I think it is beneficially long term, to do full regular push ups than assisted push ups as it will help transfer over to bench pressing.

As you can see with the mountain climbers from the beginning and at the end, how it drastically got reduced because of how exhausted I was, especially after doing push ups. I am still so very out of shape and I am hoping by doing these HIIT sessions at least twice a week, and doing my gym sessions 3 times a week, I can get back to where I was before my 2nd year of medical school crept in. I had a handle on it a bit in 2nd year but 3rd year it definitely was non-existence and was coming to a crashing end at the end of 2nd year. Such a shame 🙁